Brazil’s presidential candidates battle voter rejection

Brazil’s far-right and leftist candidates dueling for the presidency could not be further apart in terms of politics, promises and personality. But there’s one thing they share: big blocs of voters virulently opposed to seeing one or the other take power.

The reasons for the rejection are different.

Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right 63-year-old former paratrooper and long-serving member of congress, is detested by as many Brazilians as those who support him.

He has made chilling comments demeaning women and blacks, making light of rape, criticizing gays, favoring torture and expressing nostalgia for the military dictatorship that brutally ruled between 1964 and 1985.

Fernando Haddad, 55, is seen by many — especially better-off Brazilians — as representing a corrupt and incompetent Workers Party that was in charge between 2003 and 2016 when the country experienced a boom then a devastating bust.

Anti-Haddad voters focus the hate they have against ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whom he stepped in for only a month ago after Lula — in prison for bribery and money laundering — was disqualified from making a comeback.

– Election violence –
A spate of violent incidents reported in the Brazilian media since last weekend’s first round election has crystalized fears that the febrile atmosphere is tipping the country into dangerous territory.

Many of the incidents involved Bolsonaro backers targeting Haddad supporters for assault and threats.

On Monday, a 63-year-old man was stabbed to death in a bar in northeastern Salvador for reportedly saying Brazilians preferred the Workers Party.

A transgender woman, Julyanna Barbosa, told AFP she was attacked with an iron bar by street vendors in a western Rio district yelling “Bolsonaro must win to clear this trash off the street.”

A Brazilian journalists’ association, ABRAJI, said it had recorded 62 physical assaults on media workers linked to the election.

“Bolsonaro isn’t going to kill a transgender person. He’s not going to beat up a black with his own hands. But his discourse is going to legitimize other people to do so,” read an online comment posted by a Brazilian, Duda Rodrigues.

Both candidates sent out tweets disavowing the violence and calling for it to stop.

“This appeal is welcome, because the situation is really delicate,” said a sociologist studying violence in the country, Ignacio Cano, of Rio de Janeiro State University.

– Law and order –
Bolsonaro, running on a law-and-order platform, easily came out ahead in the first round with 46 percent of the vote to Haddad’s 29 percent.

A Datafolha voter intention survey published Wednesday credited him with 58 percent support, to 42 percent for the leftist candidate.

Bolsonaro’s main pillars of support are better-educated, better-off male Brazilians and millions who follow Brazil’s burgeoning evangelical churches.

Haddad’s support is concentrated in the poorer, blacker northeast of the country, where many are still grateful to Lula for poverty-reduction successes.

But both suffer major voter rejection, of more than 40 percent according to the Datafolha poll.

That makes for extreme polarization, pointing to difficulty to govern for whoever wins the presidency.

– Broadening appeal –
Both candidates are reaching out to try to bolster their support.

Bolsonaro on Thursday called elected members of his ultraconservative Social Liberal Party and other deputies backing him to Rio to show the level of support he has.

Haddad was trying to woo Brazil’s influential Catholic bishops. He also dropped images of Lula and the Workers Party signature red color from his campaign material.

On Thursday, Haddad said he was confident of closing the gap with Bolsonaro.

“We need only eight points to get to 50 (percent of polled support). We have two weeks of work to get those eight points,” he told journalists in Brasilia.